


Threads on the broken loom

by imsfire



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi Rook Needs a Hug, Bodhi is a HERO, Bodhi's tangled thoughts as he tries to recover from the torture of being interrogated at Saw's base, Gen, Guilt, I just find the idea of what he went through there quite unimaginably awful, Non-con tag is for mind-rape, Pain, Rape Recovery, also partly inspired by Riz Ahmed's explanation of his headcanon for Bodhi's backstory, and a better chance than he ever had in life, and a good therapist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 02:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10452741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Bodhi Rook struggles to retain his sanity after being tortured by Saw Gerrera.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HaneleHaralue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HaneleHaralue/gifts).



Shuttles come, shuttles go.  Are they shuttles, even?  He can’t tell.  His mind is a torn cloud, a broken toy; all the angular shapes make an interlocking puzzle but the picture is lost.  Transports like the ones he flies, cargo carriers, personnel craft.  All the ships in space, shuttling back and forth.  Their routes intertwine, woven threads on the loom.

Shuttles come and go.  His mother, standing at the big loom by the window, the persettia tree outside in flower.  Her deft hands passing the shuttles back and forth, her foot shifting the heddle rhythmically.  A tentacle of thought twines itself round her, turns her away; her dark eyes fade to Galen’s pale ones, to the hard snapping insectoid ones of the big Tognath in the desert, the implacable emotionless face staring him down.

Cargo carriers, back and forth, back and forth; the cargo, the nightmare of his work.  How can he bear it, knowing what he’s done?  Stripping his home, his world, his people, of their last treasure, stripping them of everything sacred, taking their hearts and their hope.  Hearts of kyber.  But even kyber can break; even the most pure thing can be violated.

The Empire has taken everything from Jedha and he has been their assistant, year upon year.  Coming and going, fetching and carrying, good dog, good hound, good slave.  Ripping apart the woven grace of a world.  The temples, the streets, the myriad faithful faces passing; palms and persettia giving shade, sweetness, fruit; his mother at her loom.

Tentacles coil round her, through the cool quiet of his home.  Everything he loved and worked for, gone; eviscerated, blown apart.  Rain, storming in through the blasted roof, shattered tiles sliding and dropping one by one.  The wrecked house in the old city, and the morass of mud in the valley below Eadu Research Station; threads entangled, the high desert cold and the pummelling eternal rain.  _Pilot._   A cold voice, an officer informing him, serving up plain facts unseasoned, unreasoning.  _Your request for a day’s leave has been denied.  Report to Major Intila immediately, there are shipments waiting._

Shipments come, shipments go.  The shuttles he steers, dancing back and forward through the blue tentacles of hyperspace.  The shame, to be too afraid to break ranks even to attend his own mother’s funeral.  The dog too afraid of his masters, the heart too broken to find a single thread of hope.  Guilt; guilt and guilt and guilt, twining round everything, tearing the web of his thoughts.

_Pilot.  Bodhi.  You can make this right_.  Another voice, one that is cold not with indifference but with exhaustion; a voice that has guarded itself and contained its emotions past all reason.  The voice of a man killing himself to keep a secret, get a job done.

_Listen to what is in your heart_.

The sunlight on the flowering persettia, and his mother smiling, the shuttles in her hands, the web unbroken.  _Galen, Galen help me, I’m trying to listen, I’m trying to find the way_ …

He listened, he chose; he did it.  He brought all of this.  The loom and the web are shattered, all the threads torn apart.  He chose to do this.  He always knew it would kill him.  There’s nothing left unpenetrated, unhurt, by this creeping, broken thing tangling his mind.  But he chose.  One last flight, not coming but going, going far, breaking free; and the last flight yet will go farther still, will go to the ends of it all.  He will still choose.  All the threads on the loom led to this one moment, and he chose, and he flew.

And so to now, and one last voice that speaks, that is dark and husky and alive, urgent, fiery with emotion.  That calls him _Pilot_ urgently, and again, _Pilot, are you the pilot?_ – and he raises his head out of the shadows of this place he’s never seen before, out of the coiling tangle of darkness and remembering.  He chooses again, stammering and shaking, and finds his voice somewhere, the last intact thread that is his own voice and his own self, to answer this voice of life calling him: _The pilot, I’m the pilot, yes_ …

 


End file.
